Names will be omitted. Because while I found this annoying, I don't want this to be read as a callout, but rather than as an object lesson.
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| I see you need some help. Have you read my book about successful marketing? |
Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!
Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!
I Was Minding My Own Business on Twitter...
As with most other creators out there, I'm active on as many social media platforms as I can manage. And though Twitter is by far the one I use the least at present (and it's experienced some, shall we say, trying times of late), I still try to get on there a couple times a week. I'm also not a stranger to unprompted messages, but like most authors, a majority of what I receive on that site is just slop and spam. The English is riddled with grammatical errors, the sender clearly hasn't read my book despite trying to praise it, and at the end there's a post laying out their fee to help me with promotion.
Those are easy enough to recognize, report as spam, and delete.
But sometimes I get a different type of message. These messages come from someone who has at least read some of my posts, figured out what my book is about, and they seem to come from a place where the sender does want to help. The problem is that their idea of helping is to offer me a copy of their marketing guide for selling more books, to ask if I'd like to write a guest spot on their blog, or something else that basically asks me to do some free labor on their part that might, possibly, potentially, if the stars align properly, maybe help me get more eyes on my books. Eventually.
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| I swear this will TOTALLY work... trust me! |
This is its own, special kind of frustrating, particularly because I'm sure the other party thinks they're genuinely trying to help. So if you are someone out there who has been on the other end of this equation, I need you to understand in all seriousness that you are not helping. You are, in fact, making things worse.
What Help Looks Like
I want to clarify for everyone out there that, yes, offering help is a great way to expand your network. People like people who offer them a hand up, or who try to make their workload a little bit lighter. However, it's important to ask if what you're doing is actually helping that person, or just taking up bandwidth they probably don't have to spare... because if that's the case, you have likely burned a bridge before it was even built.
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| Huh... I wonder why it keeps falling down? |
The questions you need to ask yourself go as follows:
Are You Offering A Specific Solution?
Generalities like, "You should try marketing on Blue Sky!" are not helpful. However, saying, "When you make a promotional post on FB, add a picture rather than just a link, because the site will suppress it if there's just a link preview," is an extremely helpful, specific solution to a problem. So is, "Hey, this subreddit/FB group/forum I post on loves welcoming writers. We have a three-posts-a-week promotion policy, so come over there and tag me in, and I'll help you boost your signal!"
The more specific the advice you're giving, and the more actionable it is, the more useful it will be.
Are You Asking This Person To Do One More Thing?
There is a simple truth among writers in general, and among authors in particular... most of us already have a full plate of stuff. I have 3 different social media sites I do promotion on every single day, with a 4th added into the mix every now and again. I run two different blogs, regularly turn out TTRPG supplements, make at least 1 fresh video a week, and a slew of other nonsense... I do not have the ability to add one more plate to spin among all this other nonsense I'm currently doing.
It is not helpful to tell a person who is already operating at their maximum capacity that they should try doing something else, or by giving them a homework assignment (suggesting they build a whole new platform utterly unrelated to their work, ghost blog for someone else, etc.). This is when stepping in and offering to do actual labor on their behalf is giving genuine help. Offering to share around a link to someone's book, blog, or channel, for example, is helpful. Even inviting someone onto a podcast, or to be interviewed as a guest on a YouTube channel, is helpful because you are offering them the use of your platform. Even if that platform isn't very big, this is an actionable, helpful gesture you can make.
Did They Ask For This Help?
Most creators are not shy about asking explicitly for what we need from people. Watch any YouTube video, and you'll see the host tell you to like, share, subscribe, and hit that bell. They aren't doing that for their health; it's because those actions are what tell the algorithm this channel is gaining traction, and it should be promoted to more people with similar interests. It's why authors ask you to please share their posts about new book debuts and sales, and why we all but beg people to review our stuff when they read it.
Before you reach out with an offer of help, ask if your help is on the list of things they asked for. Because even if you aren't making more work for them, and even if your solution is specific, there's a good chance they're asking for X, Y, and Z for a reason. So even if you can offer to do more, consider also doing these basic things as a sign of good faith. Authors are far more likely to listen to someone who followed their page, engaged with their posts, and shared some things to help boost their signal before trying to contact them than they are to respond positively to a random message in their inbox. Especially if that message isn't offering to help them shoulder their workload, or is demanding a fee we likely can't afford.
We Would Like Help... We Really Would...
Creators cannot, at the end of the day, make themselves successful. Every person out there who makes a living as a creator, whether they write novels, blogs, TTRPGs, make YouTube videos, or one of a thousand other things, is only successful because of the support of their backers. And for those of us who don't have big publishers, record labels, etc. helping boost our signal, we depend on people in our audience, as well as fellow creators, to help lift us up.
So, at the end of the day, you are never to big to accept a helping hand... but before you reach out, make sure what you're doing is actually going to be a real, material help, rather than unasked for advice, or a homework assignment from a stranger on the Internet. Because, and I feel I can speak for all creators on this, we are really tired of those things.
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That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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